Abstract:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set up the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to find out if the millions of dollars spent on implementing the Clean Water Act have been effective and where there are still problems that need more attention. EMAP has collected a great deal of data since 1990. Because EMAP data must be high quality, well described, and easily merged with data from other programs, we need a well organized, formal, rigorous database management system. The Oracle database management system is used to manage most of the data, ArcInfo for GIS mapping and SAS for statistical analyses. Data and information are distributed on the EMAP web site (www.epa.gov/emap).